It’s against the law for Cambodian’s to gamble. Yet in Sihanoukville, a once-sleepy resort town where three dozen casinos have sprung up, most in the past two years, Cambodians are betting that an infusion of Chinese-built infrastructure will pay off with jobs and prosperity. So far, they’ve also won increased crime, higher housing costs and more than a little ethnic tension.

Foreign casino operators are salivating over the prospect of finally winning access to the world’s third-biggest economy. They estimate that the Japanese casino market could be worth 1.75 trillion yen ($15.8 billion) a year when resorts are opened in three cities, surpassing Nevada’s $11.1 billion.

Japan’s powerful Lower Chamber of Parliament has passed a controversial Bill to regulate the setting up of integrated resorts, including casinos. This paves the way for casino moguls to enter what is projected to become the world’s second-largest gaming market, after Macau.

A plan permitting Vietnamese into a casino in the southern province of Kien Giang is a step closer after the Ministry of Planning and Investment submitted paperwork to Vietnam’s Prime Minister Nguyễn Xuân Phúc.

What year for Japan’s first IR? It’s a question that continues to divide industry stakeholders, the answer further clouded by the substantial disparity in opinion offered at last month’s Japan Gaming Congress (JgC) in Tokyo.

The story of the casino industry is a story of big companies buying other big companies, big companies buying no-so-big companies and smaller companies buying other smaller companies and becoming bigger companies. The last 20 years have seen more than a dozen operators disappear in this way, their names surviving only in the lights on the marquees, on chip faces and on the logos on table felts.

Tom Osbourne’s opinions on the subject of sports gambling are well known. He’s against it. He thinks it has negative societal consequences, and that those consequences outweigh any economic benefits a state may incur.